


Silence at the Proper Season

by Elizabeth Culmer (edenfalling)



Series: Out of Season [12]
Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Archenland, Awkward Conversations, Calormen, Cultural Differences, F/M, Fictional Religion & Theology, Future Fic, Gen, Religion, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-12
Updated: 2013-12-12
Packaged: 2018-01-04 10:26:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1079876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edenfalling/pseuds/Elizabeth%20Culmer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While in Tashbaan, Cor and Aravis receive two invitations from Shezan and Ilgamuth: one to a ritual, one to a conversation.  The latter is more dangerous.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Silence at the Proper Season

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rthstewart](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rthstewart/gifts).



> This story was written for [rthstewart](http://rthstewart.dreamwidth.org), who requested: _Narnia, Cor and Aravis meeting Ilgamuth and Shezan_. The text has been slightly altered and expanded from the Dreamwidth version.
> 
> "Silence at the Proper Season" is set at some indefinite point after "The Courting Dance" (in which Aravis and Cor get married, despite complications), and also after "A Change of Season" (which deals with the repercussions of HHB on Ilgamuth, Shezan, Rabadash, and Calormen in general). Cor and Aravis have traveled to Tashbaan for some big diplomatic occasion. This fic happens two or three days after they arrive.

Cor had never been particularly religious as a child, though he had poured water to beg Sokda's favor on his father out at sea, drawn Azaroth's eye over the windows and sprinkled ash at the door during the Winter Festival, and performed dozens of other minor everyday rituals. Adulthood hadn't changed much in that respect, though he had initially expected it might. But Archenland and Narnia built no holy places that Calormenes would recognize; their worship, such as it was, centered on spots of natural beauty, marked by nothing more than a heap of stones or an apple tree bedecked with wishing strings and the marks of claw and talon.

Aravis, however, was a child of shrines and temples, and Tashbaan was the foothold of the gods on earth. When Shezan Tolkheera invited them to observe the morning rite at the inner shrine of Achadith's temple, Aravis accepted without a second thought.

The invocation began when the lower edge of the sun's disc lifted clear of the horizon, which was just after the start of the first hour at this time of year. Or just past six o'clock, to use the northern count, Cor reminded himself. It was eerie how easily he fell back into the patterns of his childhood, back in the country that had shaped him.

Now he stood in a narrow, high-ceilinged chamber tiled in blue and gold, its colors changing as the pale light of dawn slowly overpowered the flicker of torches. He splashed water on his forehead, his hands, his bare feet, and asserted his humility before the goddess, repeating each phrase in unison with his wife, one breath after an initiate gave them the words. Achadith was not his queen, but he respected her power. There was no shame in admitting his weakness before any god's strength.

Purification complete, Cor and Aravis followed the initiate to the door of the inner shrine; she bowed them through and vanished on silent, slippered feet.

Shezan Tolkheera had not waited for them to arrive. She spun slowly as she chanted, tight clockwise circles that linked into a greater counterclockwise spiral around and in toward the marble statue of Achadith at the heart of the shrine. After each line she clapped her hands, accompanied by the chime of tiny bells. The words were strange: one string of syllables that seemed nothing but garbled nonsense repeated over and over between the proper lines of the song, a hymn to the risen sun that broke the reign of night.

Corn leaned down and murmured into Aravis's ear, "Do you know what--"

"Yes, and so do you. 'Let light pierce the darkness; let night retreat from dawn,'" Aravis murmured back. "I asked a priestess once, before my mother died. The true old words, from beyond this world, are a secret for the gods and their sworn servants alone, but everyone knows the prayer. Even peasants from a village too small to need a name."

"'Let darkness pierce the light; let day retreat from dusk,'" Cor said, remembering Arsheesh's voice as the old fisherman muttered the invocations each day when he opened the door in the morning and closed it again at night.

Aravis ground her heel into his toes. "Don't disrupt the prayer."

"I doubt I have the power to make Achadith forget what time of day it is," Cor grumbled, but he fell obediently silent and watched the Tolkheera as she dropped gracefully to her knees before the statue, bent to press her hands and head to the floor where generations of worship had worn gentle grooves in the night-chilled stone, and held her position, prostrate, for a count of nine. Then she rose and began a new invocation, this one less repetitive and sacred. In clear words, though ornate, she thanked Achadith for showing favor to Idrath World-Conqueror at the birth of Calormen, for the life and growth of the empire, and for the continuation of the line of Tash's blood on earth.

Cor tried to keep his face blank. Rejoicing in the natural world was one thing. Rejoicing in the strength of an empire that often set its face against his own land and people was another entirely. No matter that he would always love Calormen as his childhood home, Archenland was the country he had chosen and the one he would defend to his last breath if need be. He wondered what Aravis felt, but knew better than to expect any outward sign beyond appreciation for the Tolkheera's grace and enunciation.

"You are uncomfortable with this half of the rite," someone said into his left ear.

Cor twitched. Ilgamuth Tarkaan made him somewhat uncomfortable, both because the man had been at Anvard (and lost a hand in the battle), and because unlike most of the Tisroc's court, he seemed to see Cor and Aravis as they were, rather than as a caricature of traitors or barbaric northerners. That perceptiveness could be dangerous, particularly since Ilgamuth had Rabadash's ear and trust.

"Forgive me," Ilgamuth Tarkaan continued, his voice low so as not to disrupt the rite. "I mean no disrespect, nor do I accuse you of such. I would be equally ill at ease should I be required to stand politely through a prayer of thanksgiving for any of Archenland's victories in our long struggle. For though all gods are deserving of honor, one man's blessing often comes at another man's cost."

"I suppose it depends on the blessing," Cor said after a moment. "No one can quarrel with peace and good harvests."

Ilgamuth smiled. The motion pulled oddly at the scar twisting up his left cheek from the corner of his mouth. "O my prince, I would dispute that assertion, for truly, some men are never more at peace than when they follow the call to war. But look, my wife has anointed the statue and is returning the bowl to its niche," he said, gesturing with his good hand. "Let us greet her, return to my chambers in the palace, and spend the morning speaking of easy, pleasant things, which no mind or tongue can turn to spite."

Cor considered that as he watched water drip down the stone folds of the goddess's skirt into the little reflecting pool. The feet were noticeably worn in comparison to the rest of the statue. He wondered how long before the slow scour of water ate them away to nothing, and what her priestesses would do then. He suspected he shouldn't raise the question.

There were so many questions it would be unwise to raise in Calormen, let alone in Tashbaan and the heart of the empire's strength. He doubted he could spend a whole morning in Ilgamuth's company without stumbling on at least one of them, quite possibly at the other man's design. And yet, Ilgamuth was Aravis's kinsman -- his sister had married Aravis's cousin last year -- which made it difficult to refuse the invitation.

"I would dispute that any truly innocuous things exist outside of Aslan's country," Cor said slowly.

"That may, alas, be true," Ilgamuth said. "Even love can turn to hate, or victory to defeat, in the space between two beats of a single heart. Shall we let that deter us from the attempt?"

"Of course not," said Aravis, leaning around Cor to favor Ilgamuth with a blade-sharp smile of her own. "I suggest, however, that we agree beforehand to keep well away from religion, politics, war, history, and horses. That should remove the most obvious ambushes."

"Dare I ask?" Shezan Tolkheera inquired as she walked over to her husband's side, the bells around her wrists chiming faintly as she reached up to tidy her unbound hair.

Ilgamuth looked over at Cor and Aravis. "Do not be fooled; she always dares. The question is whether I should answer."

Shezan shook her head, face serious and set. "O my husband and the light of my eyes," she began, "stop provoking our guests. Rabadash can and will do that well enough on his own, come the morrow."

Cor took a second to separate the meaning of her words from their formal pattern and tone. Then he blinked.

"That may, alas, also be true," Ilgamuth said, his voice wry and fond.

Cor blinked again.

"We will also keep well away from Rabadash, both verbally and physically," Aravis said. "With that stipulation, we accept your hospitality, which I presume will include a meal as well as conversation."

"I had thought to substitute poetry and thus nourish our souls rather than our bodies--" Ilgamuth began, but Shezan interrupted.

"There will be breakfast," she said firmly. "Now, tell me what you thought of the ritual: I did not invite you to watch dumbly like stones, but to learn how our our worship compares to the reverence the northerners give the Lion. I realize you are not a true test, since you were raised in Calormen rather than among our enemies, but if our peoples are to live in peace, we must learn to understand one another and I have nowhere better to begin."

Cor glanced at Aravis. This was everything they had agreed with Ilgamuth to avoid, for fear of awkwardness and anger, and yet the Tolkheera had a point.

All friendship had to begin somewhere -- one open hand clasping another, establishing a narrow bridge of trust. Perhaps it would come to nothing, whether in one day when they spoke with Rabadash or one generation when they died, but perhaps they could build something that would last. And even one day of peace was better than an unbroken war.

"The first hymn, to dawn, is unlike anything in the north," Cor said after a long silence. "Our ancestors brought no sacred languages from other worlds, and nobody save Aslan knows the speech in which the Deep Magic is written on the Stone Table in Narnia and the World Ash Tree in the uttermost west. But we know the joy of welcoming light after darkness the same as any people in any world."

"No sacred language?" Shezan said, looking fascinated.

"None at all," Aravis said, and began to tell the Tolkheera how strange she had found northern religion in her first years at Anvard.

"Perhaps no topic is truly forbidden, either," Ilgamuth murmured to Cor as they followed their wives toward the arched doorway of the inner shrine.

"That may, luckily, be true," Cor agreed.

He turned for one last glance at the sacred place built by human hands, so different from the high, green wilderness he had grown to love. It was beautiful despite its artificiality -- perhaps even _because_ of the craft that dared to tell nature, _"I acknowledge your glory, but I can improve it."_ And no artifice, however ambitious, could deny the sun itself. The slanting rays, bright as Aslan's mane, shot down through the windows and skylight, danced upon the waters of the reflecting pool, draped like gold over the goddess in her shrine.

"'Let light pierce the darkness; let night retreat from dawn,'" he said, unsure which god he spoke to.

Perhaps it didn't matter.

In the end, they both could hear.


End file.
